Declaration of women’s and feminists movements

28 Jul 2014

At the VI Summit of President of BRICS

We, the networks and the feminist movements of the global South, that gathered in Fortaleza, 14-16 July on the occasion of the VI Summit of the Heads of State of the BRICS countries, are committed to social transformation and the construction of truly democratic secular states that ensure the exercise and the amplification of women’s human rights, of environmental justice and the redistribution of resources and power.

We understand that the current historical moment is one of a civilization crisis that requires the critical and purposeful presence of social movements of the Global South in global political arenas. In this process, we, as women, are the subjects of our own claims. We speak in our own name and take positions in regard to the state of world that are grounded on our readings and political practices.

We understand that the emancipation of women requires us to confront the ways in which capitalist forces are draining the territories where we live, the air we breathe, the water we drink and on our bodies. It is urgent to contain the losses of rights to which women are subjected under the impact of the perverse policy dynamics imposed by financial institutions, the governments of rich and powerful countries of the world, but also of the emerging BRICS bloc, within which the division between primary export and industrialized countries is in many ways reproduced. In both circumstances rural women are those more affected by acute poverty.

We frontally reject the growth of religious fundamentalism and its influence on public policies through the resource to reactionary and conservative arguments that reiterate the heteronormative and androcentric dominant logic of societies and restricts sexual autonomy and the reproductive self-determination of women, limiting the possibilities for pleasure and stigmatizing sexual identities that differ from prevailing norms.

We position ourselves against models of development that concentrate wealth and power, which are based on the exploitation of people and of nature, exacerbates consumerism, and implies the violation of human rights, the appropriation of our labor, bodies and our territories, regardless if it is promoted by G7, G20 or by BRICS. It is urgent to overcome the sexual division of labor and the super-exploitation of labor of women that is inherent to these development models.

It is vital to resist to and fight against the hegemony of capitalist economic models and recognize the legitimacy of other forms of economic survival and production of live worlds that are based on collaboration and solidarity.

It is vital to democratize existing formal political democracy and overcome its bourgeois legacy that sustains the exercise of exclusionary, patriarchal and racist systems of power that are often controlled by dominant economic forces and the big media that is associated with them. And it is even necessary to go further by radicalizing democracy in economic, cultural and daily life terms.

We struggle for the construction of alternative economic, political, social, and cultural relations amongst nations that are to be based on solidarity, redistribution of wealth, power and care. We struggle against racism and patriarchy as well as to ensure autonomy over our bodies, sexuality and reproduction, in our own countries and the across the planet.

We take note of the Declaration of the Presidents attending the Sixth BRICS Summit and we recognize that even when it indicates that predictable routes have been adopted in the Summit in relation to economic, financial, security and peace related policies, the text includes references to human rights and to the democratization of the internet. The Declaration also positively addresses historical claims of the women’s and feminists’ movements, such as women’s rights, gender equality, the rights of young people, sexual and reproductive health for all as well as reproductive rights for all. Although these inclusions are important as a starting point and a basis for monitoring policy frames implemented by the BRICS, in our view the absence of a clear reference to sexual rights is unacceptable. We also want to reaffirm that even though words are relevant they are not enough. We therefore claim the effective enforcement of these rights in daily life.

We, the women’s and feminists’ movement attending the Meeting of Civil Society Organizations parallel to the VI Summit of Presidents of the BRICS countries, are committed, jointly with social movements from all across the world, to construct radically different alternatives from what prevails today that affirm the primacy of the commons and the possibilities for the good life.